Rahul Gandhi’s Emotional Critique of India

Rahul Gandhi during his first speech as Congress party vice president, Jaipur, Jan. 20.

In his first remarks as the newly elected vice president of the ruling Congress party, Rahul Gandhi didn’t spend much time ticking off the government’s achievements after eight years in power in New Delhi.

Instead, for much of his emotional speech to a large Congress party gathering in Jaipur, the 42-year-old politician sounded like a member of the opposition as he offered a searing critique of the nation’s poor governance setup.

Mr. Gandhi, who many political observers believe will be the party’s prime ministerial contender in the 2014 national polls, said power in India is “grossly centralized,” with decisions made “by a handful of people behind closed doors who are not fully accountable.”

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Too often, he said, state chief ministers and central government ministries make decisions that local officials should be making. “We only empower people at the top of the system,” Mr. Gandhi said. “We don’t believe in empowering people all the way to the bottom.”

He also took aim at the leaders India taps, arguing that the best informed people aren’t always those who wind up in powerful positions.

“Every single day I meet people who have tremendous understanding, deep insight and no voice,” he said. “And then I meet people holding high positions with tremendous voice but no understanding for the issues at hand.” He added: “We don’t respect knowledge. We respect position.”

Mr. Gandhi had plenty of sweeping observations about India but no specific policy ideas. At times he sounded more like a political scientist than a politician. “All our public systems” he said, including administration, justice and education, “are designed to keep people with knowledge out. They are closed systems. They are designed to promote mediocrity.”

“The answer is not to run these systems better,” Mr. Gandhi said. “We have to rethink these systems and transform them completely.”

It wasn’t clear what kind of transformation Mr. Gandhi had in mind.

Mr. Gandhi also took aim at political double-speak. “People who are corrupt stand up and talk about eradicating corruption,” he said, “and then people who disrespect women everyday…talk about women’s rights.”

All of this is disillusioning to youth, he said, and helps explain why they’ve taken to the streets to vent frustrations with the government. “There is a young and impatient India and it is demanding a voice in the nation’s future,” he said.

Mr. Gandhi did tout some of the accomplishments of the Congress-led government, including a Right to Information Act that he said has empowered Indians to hold public officials accountable for corruption, and its flagship welfare initiative, the rural job guarantee program.

He said a planned food security bill “will ensure that no mother sees her child go hungry at night.” And he gave a nod to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for ushering in economic liberalization in 1991.

But those were side notes, really. Mr. Gandhi’s main message, surprisingly, was the unsurprising one that India isn’t set up to govern itself well.

Amol Sharma is an India Correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. Follow him and India Real Time on Twitter @amolsharmawsj and @indiarealtime.

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